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Results
For Pure Watercraft, the new experience reduced troubleshooting and support calls from customers experiencing boat repair issues and provided the company with more insights into the types of repairs customers most often struggle with.
From the customer experience perspective, the new app helped boaters save time and money on repairs and maintenance. With real-time visibility in their boat system status, customers could more quickly diagnose and resolve issues. It also reduced the frequency customers needed to go to repair shops, as they could more proactively address concerns rather than discovering them when the issues had gotten too big. Also by having additional feature, users no longer have to worry about juggling multiple platforms to plan their trip, the app takes care of that need.
Key Features
feature 1
Trip planning
This feature allows users to build their trip, view saved trips and points of interests. The app also gives boaters to select from recommended routes.
feature 2
Explore Your Interests
This feature enables users to browse and save favorite destinations and points of interests. The app also gives boaters relevant information such as weather conditions on the water, GPS information specific to waterways (e.g. areas they cannot pass through, rocky zones)
feature 3
Check Outboard Motor System Remotely
Typically boaters don’t know much about the boat’s engine. When issues arise, they need to take the boat to the shop to diagnose and make repairs. By giving the customers visibility into the issue right away, the customer can skip the diagnosis stage and go straight to solving the issue. Pure Watercraft can also identify issues remotely and proactively inform customers of possible concerns or maintenance they should take care of.
Research Methods
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Comparative Analysis
I conducted a comparative analysis in order to understand current companion apps that were offered by existing competitors and how they visualize their motor system for diagnostics and updates.
user journey map
We created a user journey map and categorized user boating activities into 4 main steps: Plan, Prepare The Boat, Start Boating, Return And Secure.
interview
We conducted 5 semi-structured user interviews (3 sailors and 2 speed boaters) to understand user goals and needs.
Key Findings
- Boaters do not have a comprehensive source to plan and save their trip.
- More than one platform to plan the segments of their trip makes inconsistency causes frustration as they have to juggle between multiple sources while planning their trip.
- Users desired a way to monitor the health of their motor in order to prevent unexpected breakdowns.
"There was something special about getting to actually go somewhere and accomplish something rather than just enjoying water activities."
Ideation
Prioritization:
We prioritized our design decisions base on Novelty, Usefulness and Feasibility. We focused on trip planning, navigation on points of interest and motor trouble shooting.
User Flows:
We implemented potential user flow based on our research and this has a guideline for our design of companion app.
Sitemap:
Based on the prioritization and user flows, we built a sitemap to arrange the information architecture of the companion app.
Wireframes
After ideation, we decided to build our design interface based on 3 main features: Trip planning, Explore points of interest, and motor health. I was responsible for how to design the interface of motor health. Below is an example of sketches that I created for the low-fidelity wireframe.
